Thomas L. Friedman's No. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see the world, and globalization, in a new way. With his latest book, Friedman brings a fresh and provocative outlook to another pressing issue: the interlinked crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy--both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively. His argument speaks to the 2008 presidential election--and to all of us who are concerned about the state of America and its role in the global future.
"Green is the new red, white, and
blue," Friedman declares, and proposes that an ambitious national
strategy--which he calls geo-greenism--is not only what we need to save
the planet from overheating, it is what we need to make America
healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure in
the coming E.C.E.--the Energy-Climate Era. Green-oriented practices and
technologies, established at scale everywhere from Washington to
Wal-Mart, are both the only way to mitigate climate change and the best
way for America to "get its groove back"--to "reknit America at home,
reconnect America abroad, retool America for the new century, and
restore America to its natural place in the global order."
As in The World Is Flat and his previous bestseller The Lexus and the Olive Tree,
he explains the future we are facing through an illuminating account of
recent events. He explains how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the
flattening of the world by the Internet, which has brought three billion
new consumers onto the world stage, have combined to bring the climate
and energy issues to main street. But they have not really gone down
main street yet. Indeed, it is Friedman's view that we are not really
having the green revolution that the press keeps touting, or, if we are,
"it is the only revolution in history," he says, "where no one got
hurt." No, to the contrary, argues Friedman, we're actually having a
"green party." We have not even begun to be serious yet about the speed
and scale of change that is required.
With all that in mind, Friedman
lays out his argument that if we are going to avoid the worst
disruptions looming before us as we enter the Energy-Climate Era, we are
going to need several disruptive breakthroughs in the clean-technology
sphere--disruptive in the transformational sense. He explores what
enabled the disruptive breakthroughs that created the IT (Information
Technology) revolution that flattened the world in information terms and
then shows how a similar set of disruptive breakthroughs could spark
the ET--Energy Technology--revolution. Time and again, though, Friedman
shows why it is both necessary and desirous for America to lead this
revolution--with the first green president, a green New Deal, and
spurred by the Greenest Generation--and why meeting the green challenge
of the twenty-first century could transform America every bit as meeting
the Red challenge, that of Communism, did in the twentieth century.
Hot, Flat, and Crowded is
classic Thomas L. Friedman--fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and
rich in surprising common sense about the world we live in today.
More information about Capitol Reads selections can be found on the WVLC website.
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